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Yeah thanks, did glance at this. Seems like such wide reaching impersonal goals to me. I've noticed some DWG miller outfit holding large outposts, farming all day on Indar. Seemed unusually keen to keep it, so I guessed they were just trying to boost VS score for WDS. TR randoms were running in there feeding the meat machine most of the day, largely at Crimson Bluff tower. But can organised effort really make a difference next to the natural ebb and flow of the war?

But can organised effort really make a difference next to the natural ebb and flow of the war?

Well I think thats the problem, there was no ebb and flow. There was just flow. Too much focus on exp grind which led to steamrolling around continents flipping bases and noone defended, cause holding a base did nothing for you but give a spawn point. It is an orchestrated effort to get people to defend the bases that they have.

Some would suggest that this is working, people are defending bases, but now noone is really moving around much. most just camping the highest populated continent cause that's where the "points" are earned and that's where the bodies are to shoot at.

From Malorn's post, they're going to put some points into Alerts so that people will continent hop on occasion and then the Alert cont will be the highest populated cont til the next alert.

An organized effort can make the flips on the bases where opposition has a foothold. But if you happen to be the faction with the preferred warpgate and have a big population, then you're getting more points, just defend and hold out against the seige as long as you can. Everyone complaining about WDS says the faction with North Indar WG wins. Everyone stays on Indar cause its the high population as the North Indar WG has easiest defense of most of the northern territores so the faction owning it has most of their people there defending. Simply put, its a numbers game.

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

Alerts are still a joke and just go to whoever has the highest population. People can look at a map where the alert is on and tell who is going to win just by the population numbers and who controls the map. While I was playing a NC character on Mattherson, it was just painful. Not only are the NC inept from organizing, they are on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to population. The times when they are above, there might be maybe one or two fights to even play at while the rest of the continents are completely empty. Alerts and the WDS are not solutions to any of the population imbalances/extremely low populations and the lack of wanting to do anything other than kill people.

Played a little bit on Connery since they are the highest pop server and omg the lag. So much lag I just said fuck this. Those optimizations better be good enough to merge waterson and mattherson or I guarantee people will continue to leave. No one wants to invest money in a game where they can barely find a fight or when they get to a good one, everything just lags and their fps goes to shit. I might add that at least on Connery, you weren't getting killed by random players who are in the top 1% of all players... Funny how all those MLG PRO top players flock to Mattherson..

When I did play and there was an alert, the territory control went to the highest population and the biolab alert went again, to the highest population. We had one biolab and there just were not enough NC on to even hold 1 base... The easiest to defend I might add. There was no "tacticool tactics" involved in taking that base, just numbers and that is what overwhelmed us.

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

One would hope. It definitley appears that the Alerts were the first pass at trying to calcualte a "score" in PS2 and WDS is the second. Alerts only exposed too much offense, and WDS exposed too much defense. Combining the two may hit the sweet spot for scoring and rating all 3 factions against one another.

This will then most likely extend an MLG match to the 3rd dimension of 48v48v48 instead of just 48v48. Not only will PS2 have the largest teams, but the addition of a 3rd team to a single match. Anyone know of another game where more than 2 teams compete in the same match? I don't follow eSports and can't seem to place one.

Instead of the usual counter-clock wise Warpgate rotation, I would love to see a real Warpgate hussle every now and then. So next Warpgate rotation, only switch VS an TR positions please. So VS can fight TR downwards towards Howling Pass for a change.

Alerts are for variety and a change-up from the usual Indar fight. It works when players respond to them.

One of the biggest issues with Alerts is that they are not a change up, they are the norm. Alerts are far too frequent. A couple of patches ago, there was a couple of days without Alerts and it was awesome. The players had their fights and pursued what they wanted, not what the system told them to. If we could get some no Alert days that would be great. Alerts can be turned off on the fly, announce that you're going to try some no alert days and shut them off for a few days. Hell, muster up a Double XP weekend and turn off Alerts.

yea, after Rolfski said rotate just 2 empires in a switch, I knew that made my numbers would be a little off. It's actually 3!*3 cause the rounds would be only on one continent at a time. Not globally scored, i guess, is how to say it, so you don't need global permutations.

But either way, I'm getting dragged into the details, noone needs round based competition in a persistent game. Isn't that kinda what the difference is between persistent worlds and instanced combat? Why bother with the larger framework if you're going to simply slice it up into arbitrary timeframes for an arbitrary scoring system? I mean that's the issue here. Planetside (1 and 2) claim to fame is the persistent world in an FPS. Maps don't reset, the fight never ends, so why try to put in a system that does all the things SOE designed Planetside to extend beyond?

My other problem with it is that balance is difficult to achieve in combat alone. Can you imagine how much unnecessary time it will take to balance the scoring system? Introduce a new way to earn exp, or a new OP weapon, or some people leverage an existing mechanism differently. Doesn't the general flow of who owns the most land and who gets wacked the most determine the "win" condition? Or at least "win feel" for any individual player and/or faction. If a player can't determine from feel alone who's winning and need a few numbers to tell you, your name in lights and a ribbon to say "you were there", there's issues. Why not just give participation awards so everyone has a warm and fuzzy?

Seriously what happens after Round 1 in the WDS? all bases magically go neutral and there's a mass land-rush? What exactly will separate the rounds other than some arbitrary decision of "go" and "stop"?

Get real. The truth of the matter is that PS2 isn't as large and expansive (3 vs dozen conts and no direct intercontinental linkages) as PS1 was in 2003. graphics it wins hands down, big whoop. What's good graphics do for ya when FPS goes to hell in a mid size fight? How long has it taken to introduce a new continent because they have to hand craft every square km? and they're spending their time splitting up the game into weekly rounds of who held land the most. How about make more land so that not every base is contested every 10 minutes? Make intercontinental lattice so there's movement across the universe instead of interior to each of the continents. There's no progress being made... you don't move from one to the other like ants marching across a park from picnic blanket to picnic blanket gobbling up all the sandwiches and cookies. We just sit, swinging from the right battle line to the left battle line. Get bored, jump a cont, oh wait, we're being "urged" to now that alerts will count towards our "score". (Which I'm convinced is just to have a pop lock somewhere other than Indar.)

Bleh....I'm tired of bitchin....WDS is a waste, and PS2 is quickly becoming one too, maybe I should have just said that first.